


Time Travel: Less Helpful Than You'd Think

by Xarrior



Series: Time Travel Zedaph [1]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: "set" a little while ago so that tango working on decked out makes sense, Gen, i like to think i can write humour, tango n impulse just have 1 scene each but theyre there!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28939374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xarrior/pseuds/Xarrior
Summary: Surprise! Zedaph can jump through time! Sounds great, right? Well, sometimes it's great, sometimes it goes a bit wrong.AKA a bit of exploration of my interpretation of Zed's funky editing.
Series: Time Travel Zedaph [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145705
Comments: 12
Kudos: 75





	Time Travel: Less Helpful Than You'd Think

**Author's Note:**

> TW just in case: a very mild injury occurs and there's some very minor mentions of blood in just one paragraph.

A six-by-six piston door may have been a bit of an ambitious project for Zedaph to take on, but he managed to pleasantly surprise himself. After a lot of experimenting and some creative use of components, he was able to come up with a design which honestly looked pretty impressive, and it seemed like it would even be functional! The last thing left to do would be to connect the activation mechanism to the main circuit, and everything should work fine.

With that key line placed, he gave the test lever a pull and... yes! The sound of all of the pistons firing in unison was like music to his ears. The door slid open and closed like magic. Rather pleased with himself, Zed dusted the redstone off his hands, confident that this door would continue to work flawlessly and nothing could possibly go wrong with it.

=====

It was one of those days where Zed had taken a break from working on any of his own projects to instead help out Tango with whatever massive undertaking he was currently working on; in this case, they had spent the whole day beneath the Decked Out dungeon. The day had been a bit of messing around, a lot of working together on some tricky bits and some not so tricky bits of redstone, and Zed eventually tapping out and just letting Tango do the work, opting to just keep him company instead. When he gave up on being useful, Zed had initially sat himself on a shulker nearby but out of the way, but had since laid down lazily across the collection of boxes that Tango had accrued; it was marginally more comfortable than laying on the stone floor.

They had been there for a very long time however, and despite being underground, Zed could tell they were starting to cut into night hours. Tango didn’t seem interested in slowing down though. He was sat working on some circuit that Zed hadn’t really paid attention to the purpose of. Maybe it was time for a gentle reminder of how late it was...

“Tango, it’s so LATE. We’ve been here all day!”

“I mean, you can leave if you want. I gotta keep working though.”

“No, no, I’m staying. I’m just saying though.”

It wasn’t too big a deal, really. Zed didn’t mind hanging around for longer, and he knew Tango appreciated the company. Besides, if he wasn’t there to periodically remind him of the time, Tango might never go to bed.

Tango continued working in the companionable silence for a short while, until he made a small noise of mild annoyance. He stood up, made his way over to the disorderly collection of boxes, and started to systematically search through each one. Eventually he got to the section Zed had claimed.

“Move your butt, I need to check these boxes.”

After some reluctant shuffling, he was able to check the boxes that Zed had been blocking, but apparently didn’t find whatever it was he was looking for, as he kept going.

Zed had propped himself up on an elbow, watching him curiously. “What’re you looking for?”

“Repeaters. I think I’m totally out. Do you have any on you?”

“Nope.” He replied, then laid back down.

“Gahhh-“

Tango stood still for a moment, thinking quietly, evidently going over his options.

“Hey Zed?”

“Hm?” He lifted his head and looked at Tango like he didn’t know what he was about to ask, despite knowing exactly what he was about to ask.

“Can you go get more redstone stuff from my base?”

Zed groaned dramatically, splaying his arms out across the boxes. “That’s so _far_ though.”

“I thought you were here to help!”

“I’m here for moral support now. Why don’t you go get them?”

“You think I trust you to stay down here by yourself? You’d totally get bored and break something. Or steal something. Or both.”

“I... can’t deny that.”

“Exactly.”

Having lost this argument, Zed folded his arms and huffed. Obviously going to Tango’s base and getting redstone supplies wasn’t hard (he’d done it many times before, with or without permission), but this late at night he just felt a bit lazy, y’know? He’d love for there to be an easier solution to this.

Actually? He could think of a very easy solution to this.

“Wait wait, I know what to do.”

>>>>>

“Here.”

He casually handed Tango a stack of repeaters. Tango stared at them, then blinked a couple times, looking very, _very_ confused.

“What... just happened..?”

“Oh, y’know. Time travel.”

A pause. 

“What?”

“What?”

Tango shook his head, frowning. “What do you mean _time travel_ , what did you just _do_?”

“I time travelled!”

“ _Zed_.”

“Fine, I didn’t wanna go to your base, so I jumped _forward_ in time to replace the me that had already gone to your base and brought repeaters back here.”

For some reason Zed acted like he expected Tango to be satisfied with that explanation and go back to his redstone, but apparently that wasn’t the case. It seemed he was much more interested in this new revelation than working on his game, since he was making no effort to put his newly obtained repeaters to use. 

“Are you trying to tell me I’ve known you for YEARS, and you didn’t think _once_ to mention that you can _jump forward in time_?!” 

Zed casually sat back in his spot on the shulkers, looking rather smug. “Yep. And hey- I can go backwards too.”

Tango folded his arms and tilted his head incredulously. “And you _never_ thought to mention it?”

“I dunno, I never needed to.” 

“That seems like kind of a big thing!”

“Not really? It’s not like I’m the only one that has powers.”

Tango gave an exasperated sigh. “Yeah but- I just... I can’t believe I never knew.”

“It just doesn’t come up that much! Plus, it is kinda- y’know, _weird_. Why do you think I steered clear of Area 77?”

“Right, right...” 

“It’s really not even that useful. Or consistent. Half the time I don’t even mean to do it! It just sort of... happens.”

“But you CAN do it on purpose?”

“Sometimes. I mean, I just did.”

It seemed Tango had gotten over his bewilderment, and was beginning to wear his ‘thinking’ face, easily confused with his ‘scheming’ face- wait, no, that’s definitely the scheming face.

“So if I go punch a ravager in the face and die, could you go back to stop me from doing that?” The scheming face and the ‘I currently feel like doing something extremely stupid’ face were starting to blend.

Zed gave a shrug. “Iunno. Don’t do that though, that’s a bad idea.”

“Are you future Zed telling me it’s a bad idea?”

“I don’t think so? But you should not need time travel to know that that’s a bad idea!”

Tango let out a laugh at that, but still carried on with his questions. “Wait wait, what do you mean you don’t think so? You don’t remember stuff when you go back?” He was speaking through a grin now.

“Not really. It kinda depends.”

“On what?”

Another shrug “Iunno.”

“GAH, you don’t know anything!”

“I know lot’s of things!” Zed insisted. “Just not much about time travel.”

“That’s a lie. You’re clueless, like, 95% of the time. But anyway, you _know_ we’ve gotta do some experiments with this, right? Don’t you wanna know how it works?”

“I‘ve found it’s easier to just not think about it.”

“That’s boring.”

“But it’s easy.”

Tango shook his head. “Nope. You can’t just casually reveal you can _time travel_ , say you don’t know how it works, then expect me to _not_ want to find out.”

When he put it like that, yeah, Zed could see he had a point. It wasn’t like he was that much against testing out his powers, he’d just never given them much of a second thought. Admittedly he did like to experiment though...

“Fine.” He conceded. “We can do time experiments at some point. But not now. It’s too late.” 

“Okay, fine, that’s fair. I need your help now anyway, come look at this circuit-“

=====

The door’s broken. Zed could’ve _sworn_ it had been working just fine for days! Luckily he worked out what the problem was rather quickly; one glance around the inner workings revealed that the main circuit wasn’t even connected to the activation mechanism - but how could that be? If the door had been working before then there was no way an entire integral line had been missing during that whole time. Of course he would’ve remembered to place it, he _must_ have placed it, he even had a vague memory of specifically placing it! Yet somehow there wasn’t any residual dust on the ground at all, and that stuff is impossible to get rid of entirely, unless-

Ah... 

Stupid time travel...

It was a matter of a minute or two to get the line replaced again - except “again” wasn’t quite the right word. As far as the universe was concerned the line had never been placed, although Zed very much disagreed.

Before turning to leave, he held out a finger and commanded in his most authoritative voice, as though he were commanding a dog, “Stay!”

It wouldn’t help, but at least the image of him talking to a redstone line would be funny.

He _really_ ought to get this time jumping business under control.

=====

Down below the surface, pickaxe in hand and lit torch guiding his way, Zed had to wonder: honestly, who needs to go searching in caves for coal in this day and age? Well, a man who is poor, hungry, and needs to cook food _now_ without going through the rigamarole of using a furnace powered purely by jumping. Also known as a Zedaph. A Zedaph who had somehow run out of regular, non-jumping fuel. Not everyone can have super efficient kelp farms! Or bamboo farms! Or tree farms or... efficient farms in general...

Someone has to be inefficient to make all the other guys look good! Yeah! 

The jump-powered furnace was the very pinnacle of this idea. Fun, funny, yet _maybe_ just a _teensy_ bit impractical. Come on, he can’t spend all of his life jumping just to cook his lunch; there’s only so much time in a day after all.

If his powers made _sense_ then he could just jump forward to the point in time when he _has_ coal, or when he _has_ food, or when he simply _isn’t_ hungry; but _noooo_ , things just can’t be easy, can they? No, instead he’s made to trudge through stupid dark and dingy caves with stupid twists and turns and stupid choices about whether to go left or right like this one that he’s just come up upon - might as well go right.

He rounded the corner and- * ** _THWANG_** *

A sudden sharp pain across his right arm and the clattering of an arrow against the cave wall behind him pulled Zed out of his thoughts. A single skeleton lurking in the dark had taken a cheeky potshot at him and managed to cause a nasty, painful graze. At least it hadn’t been a very good shot, although the skeleton was eagerly lining up another, aiming pointedly right at his chest.

Zed was still fumbling for a weapon when it let the arrow fly, and-

>>>>>

He was stood on the opposite side of the cave, looking at what was once a skeleton - it now looked far more like a pile of bones sitting rather pathetically on the ground. He blinked a couple times, slightly disorientated from the sudden and unexpected shift in the state of the universe around him, before letting out a huffy sigh of relief. At least his accidental time jumping manages to help him out sometimes. 

With the excitement subsiding, Zed took a look over the wound caused by the near-miss arrow that grazed him from before. It had torn the material of his cardigan, and the fabric around the wound was being gradually stained with blood, but at the very least the bleeding didn’t seem too bad. It did sting though, and unfortunately he hadn’t come equipped to do much about it. 

Great, now his arm hurts on top of everything else! Even after eating, that would be annoying enough to put him in a sour mood for the rest of the day; maybe he should try to go back... 

<<<<<

If his powers made _sense_ then he could just jump forward to the point in time when he _has_ coal, or when he _has_ food, or when he simply _isn’t_ hungry; but _noooo_ , things just can’t be easy, can they? No, instead he’s made to trudge through stupid dark and dingy caves with stupid twists and turns and stupid choices about whether to go left or right like this one that he’s just come up upon - might as well go left.

Hey, coal!

=====

The door’s broken. Hadn’t it been working before? A quick look around the inner workings revealed that the problem was a missing line that should be connecting the activation mechanism to the main circuit, but how could he have forgotten that?! For such an obvious component to have been forgotten, and he’s _sure_ he can remember placing it-

Ah. Time travel. Whoops.

=====

Who would’ve guessed that digging out the inside of an entire mountain would be so much work?! Even after hours and hours of digging, it felt like he was barely making a dent. At this point Zed was exhausted, and desperate for a way to speed the process up. There are things to do, games to play, contraptions to be built! 

He had ended up wandering about the cave, putting off returning to digging for a while. Randomly, he flopped over to lay on his back with a small huff, and stared up at the ceiling which was far too close for his liking. 

The idea of using his time travel was looking much more appealing right about now. Initially, he’d aimed to avoid it, but at this point, why not give it a try? Jumping forward to the point in time when he had already dug out the cave should be simple enough. There was no chance he could mess this up!

He raised his hands to his face to cover his eyes; it helps with the disorientation when time jumping.

>>>>>

That was more like it! Uncovering his eyes revealed large sections of the ceiling had been stripped away, and he hadn’t even had to lift a finger! Well, sucks to in-between-time Zedaph who had done the manual labour, but he didn’t really exist anymore ( ~~probably~~ ) so it’s _fine_.

There was still major digging to be done though, so why stop there? Zed covered his eyes again.

>>>>>

Nice! Even more of the ceiling was gone. Not quite as much as he would have liked, but why not go further?

>>>>>

Further!

>>>>>

Further!

<<<<<

He uncovered his eyes and..! 

The ceiling hadn’t changed at all? It was still annoyingly close to the ground where he lay. That doesn’t seem right... it doesn’t _feel_ right...

Zed frowned, trying to think logically through the series of events, most of which were now missing from his memory. Jumping ahead to when the cave had already been dug out should’ve been easy, it should’ve worked, no problem. So when he uncovered his eyes, the ceiling should have been at least a _bit_ more dug out. But since he had uncovered his eyes and the ceiling hadn’t changed at all, he must have _already_ gone forwards as much as he could, thus accidentally went _backwards_ to whenever he started.

To check, he covered his eyes again, uncovered them and... nope. Nothing had happened.

Ugh. Back to digging.

=====

The door’s broken. He can’t be sure, but a sense of déja vu gives Zed a _pretty_ good idea of what might be wrong. As suspected, checking over the redstone revealed that the activation mechanism wasn’t connected to the main circuit. 

Maybe he could ask someone else to place this specific line? As he laid down the dust himself, he resolved to ask Tango or maybe Impulse for a hand if it continued to be a problem.

He’d totally remember to do that.

=====

It wasn’t often that Zedaph found himself in the shopping district looking to buy something, since funds tended to be short more often than not. But on a lucky day like today, he was able to scrounge up a respectable pile of diamonds - whether from infrequent mining trips, a rare sale, or even sticky fingers while hanging out in Tango’s base - and could afford to spend a while browsing. He was wandering round the streets between shops considering where to spend his cash (maybe pick up a totem?) when-

“ _BOO_!”

“Ah!”

Zed let out a yelp of surprise as he whipped around to see Impulse, who had managed to sneak up on him and had used both hands to clap him on the shoulders as he yelled, in classic ‘scare your friend’ fashion.

“Impulse! What was that for?!”

Impulse was trying and failing to stifle a laugh, one hand raised to barely cover his grin. “Sorry dude. Kind of an experiment.”

“Wh- an experiment?”

He nodded. 

“Tango told me about your time travel.”

“Oh, of course he did. Blabbermouth.” 

It wasn’t particularly surprising; if Tango found out, the third member of Team ZIT was bound to find out eventually. Tango wasn’t exactly known for keeping his mouth shut.

“He also said that you said you do it when you get scared, so I just wanted to see what would happen.”

Zed gasped in mock offence. “How mean!”

“Sorry!” Impulse didn’t look very sorry, as he was still grinning. “But did it happen? I didn’t notice anything- well, I don’t even know what I was looking for.”

“Nope. You were mean to me for absolutely no reason.”

“Aw... but I wanted to see time travel!”

“You don’t _see_ time travel, Impulse. It’s more of an _experience_.”

Impulse looked a little doubtful, so Zed continued:

“Allow me to demonstrate.”

>>>>>

Zed was now stood behind Impulse, who did a double take while he tried to comprehend what had just happened. He waited a short moment, before shoving Impulse’s back playfully. Impulse didn’t jump nearly as much as Zed had, but he did seem a little spooked for a moment. From his perspective it would have looked like Zed had instantly vanished and ended up behind him, even though he’d feel like he _should_ know exactly how he’d got there - he just didn’t. His mischievous grin from before had been completely replaced by utter bewilderment.

“Wait wait wait, you can teleport too??”

“No, it’s time travel. Keep up.”

“I’m... confused...”

“Present me is standing in front of you. Future me goes and stands behind you. I jump forward in time and take future-me’s place!” Zedaph’s explanation was accompanied by gestures punctuating each step.

“That... just sounds like a really convoluted way to teleport, dude.”

“It’s time travel!”

Impulse laughed. “Whatever you say, Zed. But that’s pretty cool.”

Zed gave a proud nod with a smile. “I’m glad my skills are appreciated.”

“Huh. I’m surprised you never mentioned it sooner then.”

“ _Well_... y’know.” This again. He’d never really come up with a proper reason, mostly little excuses. “I didn’t want people asking me to start a time travel service, or shop, or something like that. I’d need to pay _road taxes_ , and the service would probably go all _wrong_ anyway and I’d get _sued_ or something-”

Impulse tilted his head, looking slightly bemused. “I don’t think we have a court?”

“Maybe someone would build one to sue me! You never know.”

“I guess not.” He agreed, before changing the subject. “Hey, you want a totem? For free, as compensation for me scaring you. I do feel a _little_ bad about that.”

“...I don’t know if I believe you. But sure, I’ll take free stuff.”

Impulse gestured for Zed to follow him to the totem shop - they weren’t too far from it - and continued their conversation in the meantime.

“So what you’re saying is you’d rather keep the whole time travel thing on the down low, right?”

“Ideally, yeah.”

Impulse nodded sagely in understanding. “That’s no problem. Won’t tell a soul. We’ll just have to see if Tango can keep his mouth shut,” he added with a chuckle.

“Oh, I doubt it.” Zed laughed. “But thanks, Impulse.”

=====

The door’s broken.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! hope zed's powers made sense, feel free to ask if u have any questions :]


End file.
